


Chemical Attraction

by QuailTail



Series: TFP : Romance [1]
Category: Transformers - All Media Types, Transformers: Prime
Genre: Alien Romance, Bonding, Cute, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Friends to Lovers, Healing, Hope, Medical Torture, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Psychological Trauma, Relationship(s), Robot/Human Relationships, Romance, Understanding, Xenophilia
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-07-31
Updated: 2015-07-09
Packaged: 2018-02-11 04:45:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 7
Words: 20,288
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2054148
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/QuailTail/pseuds/QuailTail
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The one-eyed scientist of the Decepticons decides to get familiar with the native life forms of earth through means of experimentation and dissection, killing hundreds of innocents. A girl who fell victim to this threat against humanity struggles to trust any Cybertronian people after her previous torture, but learns to find light in these dark times with the help of her new Autobot friends. Hopefully, they can fight to unravel Shockwave's true intentions and save lives. </p><p>Smokescreen/OC, soon Wheeljack/OC and UM/OC.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> This is a story all on its own. Shockwave reunites with the Decepticons in early season 2, instead of the genesis of beast hunters, possibly sometime after Smokescreen joins up with team prime. Shockwave's proposition of replicating Predicons is revealed later on, and this story occurs long before that, when things are less complicated and risky. Don't think too much about it, just enjoy. :)
> 
> ( || " " || --- Dialogue through comm. link )

 

   Chains rattled against the steel floor with the movement of a captive in a dark room. An innocent human has been locked away in this prison for what has felt like an eternity, but there was no way of knowing how long exactly, or what time of day it was because she hasn't been out of this room since she was first thrown into it. There were no windows or any source of light the room, just bolted steel walls, leaving her trapped in complete darkness. She remembered she once feared the dark, but now her eyes had all this time to adjust and she could consider the blackness around her to be familiar, almost calming. It nearly made her forget about the situation she was currently stuck in.

    The only thing she couldn't get used to was the smell. Her sense of smell was heightened since her use of eyesight is lessened, and the scent flooding the air sickened her. The smell was so strong that she could taste it on her tongue. It could only be described as a mixture of rust, rotting meat and ammonia. The stench strengthened her fears even more, making her think about all the grave horrors that happened or soon will happen outside of these walls. Funny thing is, she didn't even know where the hell she was, or how she ended up in this foreign place. Her memory of the kidnapping was a blur, like it happened in a dream. That's it, maybe this was all a silly _dream_. Though, she had to admit it was the longest nightmare ever, and it was so life-like with the rancid smells and her dry mouth and her growling stomach.

Who was she kidding, this was all real. She was probably going to die soon.

    She couldn't recall the last time she ate. It couldn't have been more than three weeks, because she would have already died from starvation. With the water situation, she got it every once in a great while, and even she couldn't believe it when it happened more than a few times. Occasionally, the door of the prison opened and would harshly leak out light into the room, and a tall creature would enter and give water to her without saying a word. It easily towered over her like a skyscraper, and she found that it was faceless and made of metal.

    She thought nothing of it, only that it was a figment of her bubbling insanity. It shown no signs of being real, and it never came close or touched or hurt her. It just came in, dropped a container of water on the ground before her and left. It happened so quickly that she couldn't really think too much about it. All she knew was that the strangely-jointed mechanical entity was the reason she was here, locked up and neglected.

    A throaty grunt escaped from the girl when the thought came to mind. Why was she here? What did she do wrong? She had begged for answers every time the captor returned, but it was no use, the creature never spoke to her. She was left in this room questioning all the wrong doings she had done to deserve this, but none came to mind. She was just a simple girl with a simple life, with a loving family and everything else she could ask for. With the fading faces of her family flashing through her hopeless mind, her eyes trailed down to see the tiniest outline of her shackled wrists in her lap in the darkness, and realized she may never see them again. Not if this room was her tomb.

    She hugs her knees to her chest and hid her face away with her frail hands. The small movement sent a pained hiss through her teeth. The skin on her back felt taut and strangely tender, and with every move it sent burning waves of across the skin. Tears pricked at her eyes as the pain subdued and she never understood why it stung so bad. She gently shuts her eyes and sends warm tears down her cheeks, soon falling off her chin and onto her knees. All hope was lost. She wasn't going to survive any longer.

    The thought made her throat swell and all she could do was croak out a tuneless hum to calm her nerves. Every once in a while she would sing to herself and rock in place, her voice shallow and weak through the darkness, bouncing off the steel structures of the room. She usually would sing until her hopes of surviving would come back, but the process was cut short when a loud mechanism shot open the door and in came the light. She shielded her dark-adjusted pupils away from the blinding light, and it soon dulled to a dim black light-like glow. Though the light was tolerable, she did not want to look past her hands.

Someone was there, she could sense it.

    It entered almost every time she sung to herself, like it had the unwelcome habit of interrupting her methods to cope. Its clunky footsteps reverberated through the floor and came to a halt a few feet away from her shivering form. Almost on cue, a capsule of water fell onto the floor before her, some escaping and soaking the floor around it. The girl darted out into a crawl towards it, but the collar around her neck held her back from it. She stretched out her arm and found her fingers barely ghosting the cup, frustrating her to no end. Usually he would throw it at her and leave and she would enjoy her water, but it seemed today he wanted to see her struggle a little more than she already has over the numerous amount of days/weeks she spent in this hell hole.

    Her fingers clawed at her collar as she continued to swipe at the capsule, cursing under her breath at how tantalizingly close she was. She looked up to see the tall robotic creature observing with his helm cocked to the side like he was inquisitive about her pathetic efforts. She quickly looked away from his unreadable 'face' and glared at the capsule of luscious liquid, determined. An idea pops in her head and she scoots onto her back (though she hissed when the skin came into contact with the floor, it was still sore,) and stretches out her legs towards the target, finally grasping it between her feet and letting out a relieved sigh. She got it! The inner celebration did not last long when she felt the creature step forward, causing her to drop the capsule and back up into the wall behind her that she was chained to. Now she was really fearing for her life. Usually the monster would keep his distance, but he was doing just the opposite today. _Is this the day they would dispose of me? Is it going to kill me right here, right now?_

    Her crazed mental questions were answered when he brought his servo forward, pinching her fragile neck in between his metal thumb and index fingers and pulling her against the chain. She grasped at the scuffed metal joints that formed his hand with a horrified gasp. This was all real. It was real. It was no figment of her imagination. She was going to die.

"Let go of me! What are you-" Her words were cut short when he pulled her up and broke the chain link as if it were a mere string. Pain radiated through her throat and she kicked and punched the metal of the silent being, hoping for it to unhand her, but it only ended up hurting herself a little more.

    Raising her up in the air with little to no effort, he brought her fighting figure dangerously close to his monitor-like face, enough to make her reel back to prevent herself from touching it. As she struggled, her sickening reflection stared back into her, and she had a feeling that the creature wanted her to see and realize how much of a disgusting creature _she_ was. Her once beautiful hair was matted and glued to her forehead in sweat. Her skin was distastefully pale and spotted with bruises. It wasn't a pretty sight to see, looking at yourself after being chained up in a unknown place, seeing what it does to you.

    She was shaking in fear because his silence was excruciating, and she felt like a bug twitching under a microscope. He will never say a word, and so when he kills you, you'll never know why. Her face slowly drained and her gasps for air were sharp and ragged, with kicking legs weakening. She was slowly falling into losing consciousness until a deep, raspy voice broke through the silence, followed by a flashing vocal equalizer across the screen of the mechanical being's 'face'.

||"Soundwave, report to me immediately."||

    In a matter of seconds, the grip around the girl's neck slackened and she dropped to the floor, vision erupting in stars once her head collided with the ground. Her eyes fluttered closed painfully when a new darkness enveloped her. Unconsciousness.

 

 


	2. Curiosity

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She then realized that she'd rather remain in the dark prison for the rest of her life than spend another second under Shockwave's care...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: Chapter contains graphic depictions of medical torture and sympathy-lacking Decepticons. 
> 
> ( || " " || --- Dialogue through comm. link )

 

    The human’s eyes squinted and groggily blinked open when she felt something hard and cold next to her head, pushing it to the side rather roughly. She attempted to swat it away with her hand but realized she couldn’t, along with her legs. She fully awoke with a start when her eyes met with a burning red optic, peering down at her defenseless form. That optic belonged to the robotic stranger that had his large finger turning her head to the side, possibly to observe how the neck tendons would jut out from under the skin with movement.

“It is awake,” The one-eyed robot spoke to himself, his voice was deep, monotonous and made the girl shiver and tug at her restraints again. How did she get here?

    The purple mechanical being removed his finger from the side of her head and prodded at her stomach, making her curl up against the binds and grit her teeth. She brought her head up to see that she was laying on some kind of metal platform, her wrists and ankles held by rusty old chains, seemingly growing tighter with every pull against it. Her old clothes stuck to her body in tattered chunks and left a lot of skin open for his dull talons to scrape along. As his fingers dragged along her dirty skin, it left scarred trails and tears pricked at her eyes.

    Humiliation settles in when the decepticon’s fingers caught onto her coverings, trailing up her stomach and rib cage. He mumbled on about how useless the clothing was when it was so easy to remove, it wasn’t much of a ‘protective armor’ when it effortlessly tore at his touch. The girl whimpered and tried to hide in her shoulder, but she knew she couldn’t escape. His finger stopped as he eyed at her bare torso, watching it quickly rise and deflate with her panicked breaths. Nonchalantly, he brought his other hand to her leg and pinched the flesh on her thigh, causing a sputtering yelp to belt out from the captive. _These lifeforms are so feeble. It is illogical that they are considered valuable affiliates to the Autobots,_ he thought. He continued to get comfortable with parts her body, nudging and prodding, until a voice broke through the silence from the other end of the lab.

“Doc-Knock in the house,”  Shockwave pulled away from the human to look at the other who announced himself and walked in with a buoyant hip, curling his talons in the air with cockiness. The Aston Martin walked to the other side of the table where the human lay, opposite of Shockwave, “Anything new from the fleshling?”

    Shockwave simply shook his head. The human gaped at the two, thinking, _who on Earth are these peopl- ...things?_ The girl flattened herself against the surface of the table when Knockout twisted his head and brought his face close to observe her with piercing red optics. He reeled back to scoff, tapping his metal talon on the edge of the table.

“Why haven’t you cut it open yet?” His voice was laced with prude impatience.

“My previous specimens died under an Earth hour, due to vital fluid loss. A pathological examination proves fatal," Knockout rolls his optics, preparing for a long speech from the purple science-wiz. "The lifeform's inner circuitry is organic, and is unable to withstand alteration with any form of cybertronian technology. I cannot vivisect without the specimen's absolute demise."

    The human froze. _Did he say there were others? Were they were planning to cut her open while she was still alive?_ The girl struggled again, trembling like a leaf, but her shuffling was ignored by the two conversing robots. Knockout looks away from Shockwave to glare down at her vulnerable form, glowing optics dilating and sending goosebumps across her skin.

"Is it necessary to keep the skinbag alive? Who cares, you'll still get the invaluable intel you're looking for, even if you tear out its vertebral column from the roots. It's all there in front of you, it doesn't matter if it's dead." Knockout advocated, crossing his arms over his chassis with an arrogant roll of his helm.

"Again, you fail to remember that I've already examined the skeletal structure, but now what I am after is something far more infinitesimal than anticipated." His finger returned to her stomach, tapping on the area where the rib cage did not protect, referring to the organs. Then he traced the end of his blunt talons across her arms and legs, hinting to the medic that he was interested in circulatory system as well.

"If I let it die, then I do not get to see the organs and intestines habitually function." Shockwave droned and Knockout rolled his optics at his orderly approach. While his words and their meaning settle in the air, the girl’s hyperventilating was all that the two could hear. Knockout closed in on the distance between them, glaring with crazed eyes.

"Why are you so scared, human? We haven't even done anything..." Knockout creepily cooed down at the ‘specimen’, twiddling a sharp talon at her face, making her turn her head away from it. Shockwave walks out of her line of sight, to retrieve something, and this leads to Knockout bringing his pointed finger dangerously close to her neck that she exposed to him, "... _yet._ " He chuckles darkly.

    Shockwave returns shortly with a vial of a strange, glowing green liquid. Knockout notices and swipes away his finger from her throat.

"What are you doing with that?" The medic mused.

"I may have to hold my cardiovascular research until I find the proper apparatus. In the mean time, I can explore chemical reactions. It is proven that they cannot survive contact with cybertronian devices," He pauses to wrap a few metal fingers around the vial's lid, and twists it off as he continued, "but I am now curious of how raw energon will react with an Earthling's outer membrane"

    A creepy smirk spreads across Knockout's face as he leans in on the table a little more.

"Ready when you are." He urged through a crooked grin.

    Shockwave begins to tip the vial towards one of her outstretched forearms, and the green liquid tantalizingly threatens to reach the edge of the flask. She struggles against the bindings with little hope, and finally the green liquid drops and lands on her skin. She wails, squinting and throwing her head side to side. But then, her eyes pop open and her screams cease, she looks at her painted arm to realize there was no sign of any pain. False alarm. There was a cold, icy sensation, as if her skin was touching snow. The green liquid clung to her skin and felt frigid, and not much else came from it.

"Strange. Nothing seems to be happening..." Knockout says with a tinge of disappointment. Shockwave is silenced by his own confusion.

"This is impossible, I..."

    He paused mid-sentence as his large optic witnesses the energon begin to bubble on his specimen’s limb, his finials perked at this unexpected turn of events. The decepticon duo almost cocked heads in unison when the bubbling gradually sped up and the human’s expression contorted. She squeaked in confusion as the once-cold sensation slowly warmed up. Bubbles formed faster as the heat grew stronger, and soon that heat became alarmingly _hot._

"That's better." Knockout’s mad smile stretched farther across his face plate.

    The room soon echoed with whimpers and cries, as Knockout and Shockwave simply indulged themselves in the interesting and unexpected reaction. She hissed through her teeth as the energon on her arm continued to sizzle and literally eat away at her flesh.

"Organics can't stand anything, they're such a weak life form..." The Aston Martin articulated, and Shockwave silently nodded in agreement.

    Humiliation, agony, confusion. All these emotions rattled around within her and all she could do was watch as the meat of her arm dissolved away, and as it did, surprisingly so did the energon with it. The human tore her watery eyes away from her mess of an arm to look up at a grinning face. The red one was snickering while she suffered, and blinding anger flashed through her eyes when she realized, _who in their right mind would do this to somebody, all the while, enjoy it?_ The smell of fizzing chemicals and boiling flesh soaked the air, and she wanted to vomit, though there was nothing in her stomach to choke up. She cringed as the energon ate through layers of muscle and reached deeply towards her bones, to her unfortunate realization, she couldn’t flex her fingers anymore. It burned so painfully slow that she almost begged for them to kill her and end it all. She once feared it, but at this point, she welcomed it. She couldn’t even manage out words, only cry and bite at her shoulders.

“It seems to cauterize as it erodes,” Knockout noted outloud and started to snicker as another blood-curdling scream escaped from her throat. “The energon is almost gone.”

    The human was barely holding on, her eyes fluttering from the overflow of pain and the threat of unconsciousness. Before she could slip, a blip of an interfering comm. link was heard.

||"KNOCKOUT!"|| Knockout’s smile drops as he turns his head frantically over both shoulders. ||"WHAT IS WITH ALL THAT RACKET?!"|| Knockout darkened as he recognized the voice of his unhappy dark lord from the comm. panel on the other side of the room. In all this fun, he hadn’t realized how much noise the organic was actually making, or that it could be heard all the way to the cockpit of the Nemesis. Knockout swallowed hard.

"It wasn't me this time, it was the human!" He sputtered shamelessly. Shockwave calculatingly shook his helm at the smaller robot’s piteous discomposure towards his liege.

“Why do you immediately assume it was me…” Knockout mumbles to himself and waltzes to the hologram board, with a forced smile, staring into the hologrammed red eyes of an irked Megatron. His shark-like teeth were menacingly peeking out from his scowl, but Knockout looked past that in hopes of not oiling himself, picking out Soundwave and some generic vehicons at their workstations in the background. Shockwave silently joined to stand behind the red medic, and Megatron seemed to simmer down when he came into view on his side of the feed.

||"Report to me, immediately."|| The harsh, loathsome-toned voice bore into the mech's transistors, and Megatron’s image disappeared as fast as it came. As soon as it did, Knockout’s mask of obedience faded and he squeezed the bridge of his nose in irritation with forceful sigh. He looks past his talons to glare up at Shockwave.

“Best to not keep him waiting,” Knockout grumbles and walks towards the exit, with Shockwave following mutely behind him.

    The human was forgotten and left on the dissection table, barely able to keep her eyes open. She blinked away the continuous stream of tears and blurriness due to the mind-numbing pain. There was hardly enough strength to lift her head off the table to look down at her arm. _So tired._ Through the wavering vision, she recognized a gap in her arm, lots of fleshy reds and pinks, and even some white. Shockingly enough, the white was her bare bone. This cognizance caused her to drop her head and her grip on consciousness.

* * *

 

“Coast is clear, so far,” The former Elite Guard whispered with his fingers pressed to his audio receptors as he sneaked through the halls of the Nemesis, peeking around the corners for droids on march.

    Smokescreen crept down a corridor, occasionally peeking over his shoulder for any signs of action. He sucked in a breath when a pair of patrolling vehicons turned to enter the walkway he was in, and he impulsively jumped into the wall. Thanks to the phase-shifter snug around his bulky wrist, he quickly ambled out of sight and the guards had no idea of his presence. Smokescreen stuck his helm out from the wall after they walked past, soon walking across the platform to phase through the opposite wall to explore.

||”You en route?”|| A rustic voice asked from Smokescreen’s comm.

“I always am,” He replied with his childish morale, phasing into a few more sections of rooms before he stopped and pulled out a datapad.

||Then why aren’t you out yet?”|| Smokescreen sighed at Wheeljack’s mellow complaint.

“You always get so impatient when it’s my turn,” He shook his head with a snide grin as he fiddled with his datapad screen.

||”You know me, I hate sittin’ out,”||

“It’ll be your turn after this, remember? Besides, I’m almost there.” Smokescreen continued forward with a constant check in both directions. Usually he would jump right into trouble, but knowing Wheeljack was his only backup made him extra cautious. He wouldn't want to get things complicated and let the team know what he and Wheeljack were up to these days. Team Prime didn’t even know these two were even relatively _close_ to the Nemesis, never mind _on_ it.

||”You mean you’re not even on your way _back_ yet?”|| The wrecker groaned through the transmission. Smokescreen almost reached up and turned off the comm. but fought against it. He simply ignored him and his persistence.

    Smokescreen paused in a hallway to look at his datapad, then around himself to examine the walls. He switched off his phase-shifter to rub his thumb at the wall, scratching next to an old scuff mark he left there from his last risky visit. He created a method of marking the walls of the places and halls he’s discovered, though every time he came, he found something new. With every discovery, he inserted the information into his handy-dandy datapad. Unfortunately, the walls of the Nemesis were low-maintenance, so his marks were hard to decipher from the rest that scattered the surfaces. Some of them just looked too similar, just like the corridors of this war-ship. How did the ‘cons manage to _not_ lose themselves in their own ship? He wouldn't admit it, but he’s been lost for almost a half-hour. This ship was _insanely_ big.

    Smokescreen tapped his phase-shifter back on to walk into the wall before him, optics glued to his hand-held and pedes pulling him across the room. He was about to phase into the next until a strange sound brought him out of his concentration. He turned around to speculate the room, finding himself in a laboratory. Last time he was here, he found containers of synthetic energon, though he chose not to take any since he remembered Ratchet telling him about how synth en fuddled with his systems. Now, the containers that sat on the countertops were empty and thrown about.

    He glanced around, and something caught his eye. He was unsure of what it was until the noise from before confirmed it. He nearly jumped out of his armor.

“Change of plans, Wheeljack, something came up,” Smokescreen exclaimed, hustling towards the wheezing human shackled to the dissection table. His brows knit together at how frail and malnourished the organic looked, and distinguished it easily as a female. He felt so discouraged, knowing he walked right past this victim without even noticing, he mentally scolded himself at how  _really_  aware of his surroundings he was. He could have left this human to die. What else did he possibly walk past? He found he was focusing too hard on his datapad.

||”You get caught? That’s what you get for taking your time,”|| He responded matter-of-factly.

“N-No…” He ignored Wheeljack as his optics fell upon her limb, and obviously it didn't look healthy at all. He brings a lightly-shaking servo to the chains and breaks them effortlessly, soon holding her limp body in his palm. He muttered down at her, afraid his voice would hurt her further somehow, “I’m gonna get you out of here,”

||”What?”|| Wheeljack seemed to overhear him anyway.

“Looks like we've got a live one,” He breathed again, slowly making his way across the lab.

||”’Live _what?_ ”|| The wrecker griped, soon turning his dials to fight through the poor connection he thought he had, but really it was only Smokescreen whispering.

    The young autobot ended up turning off his comm. link, deciding that he would explain once he got there. He looks at the human in his hands, curled up in a slack ball, scared, cold, bare to the world. He doesn’t stand around long in fear of organic’s life, and belts out into a paced sprint, phasing through rooms and hallways in the direction of the landing strip of the Nemesis. He speedily phased through drones, alerting them of his presence, but time was of the essence and there was no need for caution. Shockingly, one of the strolling 'cons he phases through ended up being Soundwave, and Smokescreen didn't even notice, although the communications officer did.

    The stern of the ship was close and Smokescreen brought the human closer to his chassis, feeling her breathe, knowing  _there is hope, yet._ He escaped out onto the strip, optics falling upon the Jackhammer Wheeljack parked on top of some standing-guard Eradicons. As Smokescreen covered the distance, Wheeljack gestured him to get in as he hung out from his ship’s cockpit.

“What gives?” The wrecker called out over the thrumming of his ship's engines to Smokescreen, referring to his odd behavior. He climbed back inside his ship and flips the switch to open up the hatches. As Smokescreen jumps inside, Wheeljack is confused to see a glimpse of a human in his servos. The rushed actions of the mech made Wheeljack kick into over-drive, he’s never seen him so freaked out before.

“Let’s go,” Smokescreen fretted, and Wheeljack readies the Jackhammer to fly back to base without another word. **  
**

 


	3. Logical and Illogical

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shockwave explains his reason behind his research on organics and Smokescreen overcomes his hesitance of confronting Ratchet to save the human's life.

 

"Status report..." Megatron inquired firmly once he heard Shockwave and Knockout enter the spacious flight deck.

    Shockwave senses the lack of patience in his voice, and stares at his liege, back facing him with his knife-like servos folded at the small of his back-strut, optics focused on the blue sky and clouds outside the wide window. He fears that his lord will put an end to his work because nothing good has come from it yet, only that his analytic tendencies were satisfied at the moment. Shockwave notices Knockout swallowing his pride and obediently bowing aside him, and he then followed promptly. Starscream, who was previously leaning against a navigation station ordering eradicons around, pushed himself up and off the desk with a glorified gasp.

"Don't tell me you were wasting precious energon on your trivial experiments!" Starscream speaks over Megatron, pointing at the green stains on Shockwave’s servos.

    Starscream backs off with a nervous chuckle when Megatron turns around and burns a scowl into him, his optics warning _‘remember your place’_. Shockwave looks to the floor, feeling Starscream’s ridiculing optics gaze over the two, especially at Knockout and how he slightly jumped at his voice. What confused the one-eyed scientist was why they were so concerned about using energon from the stash when they clearly have loads of it, but the SIC probably wanted to throw the subject into the spotlight just to get him in trouble.

"My experiments unfold multiple approaches to the destruction of the obstacles in the path of your reign over Earth," Shockwave speaks to Megatron, ignoring the fact that Starscream even dared to speak for his one and only leader. "May I mention I used the synthetic samples, not the natural reserves."

"By obstacles, you mean the humans?" Megatron speaks this time. Shockwave looks up and nods.

"So you decide to focus on the _humans_ ," Starscream's voice raises, " _rather_ than the Autobots?!" Megatron grew tired of Starscream’s incompetence to remain silent and roughly pushed him to the side. Shockwave was fully aware that the seeker was trying to influence Megatron into thinking his intentions were insane.

“I thought about this for a while too, lord Megatron,” Knockout spoke and did not dare to stand on offense when Megatron was right before him. Knockout dissented, "Why make biological warfare, when you can just _step_ on them?"

    Shockwave didn't understand how the others could be so uninterested in a species they knew so little about. They scoured a planet teeming with these small creatures, for spirits sake. It almost frustrated him that his lord did not allow him to indulge in his tendencies to study and research biologies of foreign species in peace. He felt like he was the only one who had that urge. Sure, Knockout took part in his research but really he just liked to tear them apart, completely mutilating the specimen and leaving little to examine. Shockwave pauses, and looks down, lifting his foot to look under it.

"Then why haven't you done so?" He murmurs in his throat, knowing it would undoubtedly be messy. The room is silent. It is true, it would have been done if it was easy. If only the Autobots hadn’t guarded their charges like dogs.

"They aren't even that much of a problem, we already have enough on our hands with the Autobots." Starscream rested a hand on a cocked hip.

"Do you fail to realize that they successfully downloaded our Iacon database, retrieved the knowledge of Vector Sigma and eliminated the strongest of the insecticons among our ranks?” Shockwave steps towards Starscream, making him crumble in intimidation. "It is logical to study the inner structure of the Earth creatures, since evidently you _‘have enough on your hands with the Autobots’_ , and because of that, it makes this all the more necessary. The autobots are protective of their species, so eliminating their kind would offer many advantages,”

"So we could demand their compliance so they could prevent their destruction?" Megatron’s voice crooned in amusement.

"Precisely." Shockwave confirmed.

    Megatron brought a servo to his chin, tapping his maw with a talon in thought. Starscream was almost offended that he actually considered Shockwave’s nonsense, though in all honesty, he would have gone with it if he came up with the plan himself. It was just that he loathed Shockwave and the amount of trust he had with Megatron. Megatron sighed.

“ _Fine_. As long as this doesn’t distract you from our main objective, do as you please.” Megatron concluded and turned away with a dismissive wave to his subordinates.

    Starscream could only scoff and glare between the three, thinking, _‘maybe this foolish contrivance will fail, and it won’t be on me.’_ Normally he would have no problem with eradicating the filthy beings of this planet, but because the idea came from Shockwave, he immediately hated it. If his scheme did carry out as planned, he could possibly win Megatron’s favor, and obviously he wouldn’t want that.

“Thank you, my liege.” Shockwave bowed and turned back to return to his lab.

“Oh, and one more thing,” Megatron offered over his shoulder before Shockwave left the room along with Knockout.

“Refrain from storing the carcasses in the repository vault,” His scarred maw curled into a scowl. “The odor is _nauseating_.”

 

* * *

    Wheeljack’s firm grip on the joysticks of the Jackhammer clenched when a pained whimper wheezed from the human in Smokescreen’s servos, reminding him of the life that was possibly slipping away. They had no idea who this organic was, or why in the Allspark it was on the Nemesis on the first place. The answers weren’t important now, all they could instinctively do was bring it to the base, the rest would know what to do. Though it was a stranger, they pledged they would help those in need. Even if it were a mere _human_. Even if they weren’t obligated to protect all sentient life, it would just feel _wrong_ to let someone die when there was the possibility of saving them.

“Hang in there, kid,” Wheeljack said under his breath as the base came into sight.

    The Jackhammer descended and landed a few feet from the hidden entrance of the hangar, camouflaged as the rocky column of the escarpment. The hatches of the ship hissed open and Smokescreen jogged out, human in hand and making a beeline into the base. Wheeljack remained in the ship, pondering on whether or not he should follow suit or wait it out, he wouldn’t want to be around when the ‘bots asked questions and then the truth comes out.

    Smokescreen ran through the tunnel to find the kids sitting on the couch, distracted by a videogame as Bumblebee cheered them on. Ratchet was busy at the main console as he normally was, and took his eyes off the screen when the young ‘bot came rushing through.

“Smokescreen, any Decepticon activi-” The medic paused when the mech in question whizzed by him, leaving him standing confused. He just shrugged it off and returned to his earlier tasks.

“Hey, Smokes, what’s up?” Jack grinned and waved at him as he quickly advanced towards their group. Expecting his upbeat demeanor, his smile fell when he was ignored and Smokescreen kept walking, though when he passed by the couch, he haphazardly pulled the blanket they were sitting on right out from under them. The kids obviously weren’t happy, since the sudden pull forced them off the couch and onto the floor. Smokescreen used the stolen sheet to wrap it around the unconscious human, hoping that the shivering was because she was cold, not because she was going through shock. The kids were going to complain, but stopped when they realized his uneasy aura.

“Smokey?” Miko questioned from the floor. Again, she was ignored also.

    Now everyone in the room had their eyes on the strangely silent, (except for some edgy breathing), autobot. It was so odd seeing him like this, Ratchet almost assumed it was one of his foolish pranks. They noticed he was extremely focused on something in his servos, and he caged his hands so that they couldn’t manage to see what it was. Bumblebee looked on with a worried whirr, and Ratchet hesitated to grab Smokescreen by the shoulder and smack some sense into him, it was blatantly obvious that something was terribly wrong. Smokescreen never acts like this.

    Smokescreen was going to immediately tell Ratchet about this, but he was worried about the outcome. He, for sure, would get in trouble. He thought Wheeljack would be with him to explain, but now that he found that he was not, he wasn’t sure if he could do it. He didn’t feel like getting a wrench to the head this solar cycle. But if he didn’t, the human could die. She was probably dying at this moment. Why was he so scared? Wasn’t that why he was here in the first place? Help? He paced for a few moments, fighting his inner struggle, oblivious to everyone’s bewildered stare.

    Smokescreen finally looked up from his hands to gawk at his two teammates, deciding that saving this life was more important than avoiding a little scolding.

"Ratchet, there's something wrong," He blurted, his voice wavering. "It won't wake up."

   He stood before the two, opening his hands to show them what he was hiding for the past few minutes. "Where are its outer-coverings?"

    Bumblebee let’s out a relieved bleep at how the problem was only a human, but his happiness soon fades and his optics zoom in slowly when they realize she is injured and malnourished, cradling a damaged arm. Ratchet stands with his mouth agape, brow-plates knitting into an expression of anguish and compelling concern. Jack, Raphael and Miko catch onto the situation and walk to the edge of the concrete terrace, attempting to step in but Bumblebee tries to shield them off. They wouldn’t want the kids to see something like this.

“Jack, call your mother,” Ratchet hastily requested, his tone revealing his internal battle to hold back his horror. "It is rather urgent."

* * *

 

   Shockwave and Knockout strolled down the corridor to return to the lab, likely to finish what they started. Knockout awkwardly casts glances at Shockwave, knowing full well that small talk was a rarity when it came to his emotionless lab-partner. Their forced partnership has been a quiet one, and Knockout has always been the one to initiate a conversation to avoid the arduous silence. He taps the tips of his talons together as he walks alongside the other.

“I’m surprised he didn’t ask about the synthen formula,” Knockout uttered.

    Shockwave prefered that his liege didn’t, since he has been somewhat working on the synth en formula, but it is still incomplete. Megatron would be disappointed to hear that, and he would maybe stop his experiments so he would focus on the formula. Or it is possible that he _already_ knew of the formula’s incompletion, just by looking at the careless stains of vivid green on his servos. He knew he would only dispose of a defective batch. Who knew he would decide to do so on one of his organic subjects?

"All my mixtures prove to be corrosive." Shockwave answered bitterly. “The formula shows no sign of completion, there always seems to be something… missing,”

    They turn into the laboratory to head straight for the dissection table, ready to take note of the changes in reaction while they were gone. They were surprised to find that the specimen was not there.

"It escaped? How is this possible?!" Knockout seethed, bending to check under the tables for the human.

“Illogical.” Shockwave stands by the once-occupied table, grasping at the chains that seemed to be forcefully broken. It is clear that the human could not break through them by its own strength. As he examined them with a careful eye, he was starting to piece it together.

"Here we go again, more of the logical and illogical." The medic jeered with a mocking roll of his optics. “You didn’t bind the chains properly, admit it,” He accused. His allegation is ignored.

“I am convinced that we had a visitor.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know, this is going really slowly. I just wanted to build up to the grand reveal of who the human really is, and what she is unknowingly a part of. You'll find out soon! We first gotta get out of the drama and then good things will come from it. Patience, there will be massive fluffy-bonding contents in the future.


	4. Questionable Answers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ratchet squeezes valuable intel from Smokescreen and Wheeljack after an evaluation of the body.

 

    A careful hand rested upon a still one, her thumb rubbing on the clammy, bruised skin and her eyes trailing down the U.V. tubes from her wrist, watching the fluids run through. June brought her hand to slip her finger gently under the gauze wrapped freshly around the girl’s head with a sigh, thinking, _who is this poor girl? How did she get herself into this mess?_

    June responded almost immediately when she got the call. She was just released from work and was about to get in her car when she received the news. When it was clear that it was an emergency and someone’s life was at stake, she packed up her first-aid bag with no questions asked. Luckily she left the stretcher at the base from the last time, because she wasn’t sure if she could bring anybody to the hospital if they were injured by what modern medicines couldn’t treat. If it had something to do with what happened to Raf, like the energon scare, she couldn’t bring it into public attention.

    She had the girl rushed on fluids and oxygen, and slowly but surely got her stabilized. Now all she could do was sit and wait, and she couldn't bring her to the emergency room because she herself didn’t know if she was hit with anything… _alien._ Since the girl was stable and the stressful atmosphere subsided, she decided to ask what has been on her mind since the moment she walked into the hangar.

“What happened?” She looks to Ratchet standing by his usual post at the monitor, eyeing the progressively calming spikes in the patient’s heart-rate. “Well?”

Ratchet simply looks over at Smokescreen, since he truly didn’t know and was looking for an answer to all this madness also.

“ _Well?_ ” He repeats her words sharply, making the ‘bot in question freeze under his gaze. “Uh. I-it’s classified...” Smokescreen responds with a nervous chuckle and his servos raised in defense. With all eyes on him, expecting him to fess up, he slowly backs up into the corridor and quietly escapes without another word.

“The one time he _doesn’t_ talk,” Ratchet mumbles with a grim shake of his head.

“ _Really?_ ” June asks sarcastically and returns her attention to her patient, wondering if further examination of her body would clear things up. She was too concerned about regulating her blood pressure and keeping her heart beating, never mind to check on her other injuries. It was obvious that she suffered a concussion, due to the blood once running from her nose, ' _but from what?'_ she wondered. June had it iced and wrapped in bandages, knowing the injury was mild and treated properly, so it wasn’t going to be a problem. Though, she couldn’t say the same about her arm.

    Hundreds of questions sped through her head to what it could be. Was she a krokodil user? June identified that that couldn’t be the case because of how fresh the wound was, those kind of opioid drugs would take a long while to do damage to the body like this. Did she have a bad day in chemistry class? The only thing that made sense was that high-school substances wouldn’t do harm to this degree. All her possible scenarios to what could of happened didn’t add up. She turns to Ratchet and finds that he was already solemnly staring in her direction.

“Can you do a scan on her?” June eyed the patient top to bottom, shaking her head at every bruise and cut on the girl’s skin.

“It couldn’t hurt,” Ratchet exhales as he heads towards his workspace filled with various bits and pieces of unfinished projects, and picks out his anomaly device. He then trudges to June’s side to kneel low, bringing the scanner over the patient’s body. A beam of light skims over the contours of her form, and the results of the scan gather on the screen of the device, leaving Ratchet to gape in awe. He ran another scan just to make sure his optics weren’t playing tricks on him, and held onto an intake of air when the results came back the same as the first.

“There is a trace of a chemical composition of… _Energon.”_ Ratchet confirmed. This made the two gape at each other in silence.

    So there goes her ticket into the hospital. June was positive that the girl had to have her arm amputated, it was clear that she most likely wouldn’t have motor capabilities in it after this accident. Again, she would have to wait until she woke up to know. And she obviously couldn’t do so alone and without the proper equipment. Bringing her to the emergency room was now not an option because those performing the surgery would ask what happened, and they might find out about the alien lifeforms that have been on Earth. That wouldn’t slide easily with the people.

    With all the commotion going on right before them and still not even a part of it, the kids on the concrete balcony were standing with confusion written plainly on their faces, peeking desperately over a jumpy yellow scout, who seemed to sway in front of anyone who would try to look. Bumblebee, although concerned about the situation also, worried more about keeping the unpleasant sights unseen from the kids.

    In the far-off corner of the clamorous room, Smokescreen who earlier took his leave from the questioning, returned quietly, peeping around the corner from the hangar hallway. He still had this whole episode marinating inside of his processor; finding the human left for scrap, the antsy ride to base in the Jackhammer, announcing the situation without the support of Wheeljack (where was that slag-head, anyway? He was gonna pay for ditching him like that), watching June arrive and revive the poor human. The harsh pumping June made on the human’s sternum was what did it, and the screeching inhale that came after it. Oh how unsettling it was, it left him trembling with the willies. Something inside him forced him to remain silent when June and Ratchet questioned him, and he just had to leave and walk it off. He had roamed into the inner dorms of the barracks, and after he thought about everything, he realized, _‘Did I really just walk away from my problems?’_. He took a moment to press his metal palm into his forehead, groaning at how much of a pansy he was being. Escaping when troubles arrived? This was not him. This was not him at all.

    Why did something so… little, tear him up so bad? But really, this whole thing wasn’t _little_ at all. He’d been out in stasis for so long, and he was a mere Elite Guard that watched over an old ‘bot and some relics, which meant he never engaged in actual combat, meaning he hadn’t familiarized with death. He was all new to this stuff, especially with the humans and how ridiculously fragile they were. He really didn’t want to be at fault when people die. Sure, he slagged a few ‘cons when he first arrived, but this human was an innocent. He never lost a life, especially one of these fleshy Earth creatures. He didn’t even know this person. It’s just that all of this was so… strange.

    His walk back to the main room was a hesitant one, and when he saw the human again, laying in the stretcher utterly dormant, his sense of courage faltered. He fought against it with every step closer, and he gawkily stood off to the side and kept his eyes glued on the human gently breathing through the oxygen mask as June and Ratchet spoke to one another by the bedside. Bumblebee struggled with Jack, Miko and Rafael, fighting to be the censor of the dilemma, but Miko decided to make a break down the staircase to the lower floor to join the medic and nurse, and while attempting to stop her, Bee opened up the view for Jack and Rafael. This was when he deflated a sigh in defeat.

“Woah,” All three of the minors breathed when they finally saw what all the hubbub was about. It was a dreary sight; a girl as pale as the stark-white sheets underneath her, needles in her veins and taped down onto her wrist, the lower half of her face concealed under a hissing oxygen mask, machines keeping her alive. Though, she could be mistaken for the dead. Not a pretty scene. Ratchet turned to shake his head in disappointment at Bumblebee when he noticed Miko rush into sight, and the boys on the terrace gaping, knowing full well he asked for him to keep the kids at bay. Miko brought a hand to her mouth, regretting getting a closer look when she noticed all the dark bruises splotching her flesh and her overall debilitative state. Ratchet and June decided to ignore the kids and bring their concentration to the problem at hand.

"Raf was hit a while back with this energon, why is she responding far worse?" She referred to the gaping wound in the patient’s arm that seemed like it was eaten away from some kind of acid. She could clearly recognize the radius and ulna and the gap between the two. June remembered Raf never had any type of lacerations when he came into contact with energon. _Lacerations_ would be addressing it lightly.

"Rafael was in Bumblebee's vehicular mode, so he only got a _fraction_ of the effects. The energon was in plasma form, frequently used for far-range ordnance, so the quantity of energon dispersed in each blast is reduced to prevent energon deprivation in our... system..." His voice died out when he noticed June blinking, struggling to follow his quick clarification. He tried to hold back on confusing them all with his theories, candidly continuing, but slowing down his explanation.  

"...but our weapons are designed to use more of a..." He looked for a simple way to describe with a cycling gesture of his free servo, _"forceful volt_ of shock instead of using literal energon, so it is allotted-"

"Get on with it, doc-bot!" Miko shouted with her head in her hands. Ratchet groaned and continued.

"What we are _dealing_ with here is a potent sample of energon in its _liquid_ state coming into _direct_ contact with a human's organic membrane..." He droned as everyone's eyes fell to the girl's arm, or at least what was left of it. "And I presume only a little droplet was used. Still, with ghastly effects. I don't remember energon reacting so aggressively with a carbon-based lifeform..." He held himself back from getting any further towards his arguments of how tenuous humans were. Earthlings losing limbs to dissolution just because of his people’s _life blood?_

"Maybe a droplet for you is a gallon to us." Jack disputed and looked back up into Ratchet's wearisome eyes.

    Ratchet slowly nodded in understanding and an unnerving silence filled the room. Eventually he rose to his full height to return to his work station, placing his device back on the workbench he first retrieved it from. June takes the time to note the purple bruises on her neck. They were so incredibly _dark,_ and seemed to show that extreme pressure was placed mostly on the sides of the neck, underneath her ears and spread down the column of her throat. She clicked her tongue when she realized the girl’s neck was poorly supported, and turned to her car parked a ways behind her, left in the middle of the concrete floor.

“Can you go get the pillow from my car? It’s in the trunk,” She spoke to Miko, who nodded and did as she was told, lightly jogging to her car and pulling out the sterile pillow from the trunk. As Miko returned, June wedged her arm lightly under the girl’s back and the nape of her neck, ready to lift her to stick the pillow under her head. When she brought her into a sitting position, Miko seemed to stop cold in her tracks.

“W-what is that?” Miko asked, barely over a whisper as she brought a finger to point at the bare back of the girl. June looked to where she was gesturing towards, and almost choked on her gasp.

    In the wake of pale skin were lines of scarred tissue that nearly covered her entire back, forming odd symbols on the surface of the skin. Scarred flesh raised in purple welts that lined over the taut skin, hugging tightly over jutting vertebrae and shoulder blades. Unmistakably, these blemishes had defined edges and was most likely the result of a careful hand’s work. They stared with wide eyes as June brought a hand to the skin, lightly ghosting the emboss of flesh and receiving a stir from the girl, most likely from tenderness. The marks made them think of everything but Earth-bound.

“Ratchet,” June waved the ‘bot over without taking her eyes off the contusions. _“Ratchet.”_

“Statistics read normal,” He answered, mistaking her call for a report on progressions, not visualizing June’s attempts to call him over. He looks over for a moment, and grows curious when she is still waving for him to come. Turning from his post with a huff, he returns back at her side and kneels once again, optics almost instantly drawn to the girl’s bare back. He was left frozen solid, staring with unwavering unease, seeming to remain still like a solid statue for what seemed like forever. June could read in his bright cyan orbs that the symbols rang familiar to him, as if he knew exactly what they stood for and that he was hesitant to translate.

“Cybertronian,” He finally says through the dead air. “48.”

"48? Does that mean something?"

"Other than its numerical value, I sure hope not." He sternly admits with hints of hope lacing his tone. "We will just have to wait until she wakes, maybe she will spread light on all of this." _‘...Since Smokescreen is currently keeping his mouth shut when pursued,’_ He thought.

    With Smokescreen on mind, Ratchet turns to look over his shoulder at him, who all this time was standing idly to the side with an astounded pair of eyes glued on the organic in the makeshift hospital bed. The servo Smokescreen wearily smeared on his faceplate shown that he himself did not know about the scars, and seeing them just a moment ago reminded him of how terribly oblivious he was to detail. When he found the human, she was on her back and he did not think to turn her over to check, there was no reason to at the time. Or it was possible he was blind-sighted by dread and instinct, given the situation. He was only aware of the gaping wound in her forearm. He just knew the human girl was minutes from death, and all that clicked in his processor was to bring her to medical aid.

“Have you seen enough? It would be best if we knew what we are dealing with,” Ratchet inquired tiredly at Smokescreen, standing up to face him. "I am aware there is something you are not telling me,"

“I found her, and I did the only thing that felt right. Bring her here. That’s all there is to it.” Smokescreen answers quickly with bubbling dignity and Ratchet stares him down with a criticizing tilt of his helm.

    It wasn’t that Smokescreen enjoyed holding this information away from his respected peer, actually, it was quite the opposite. He could say he felt a mixture of powerful guilt of what he has done throughout many megacycles with Wheeljack that was completely against all he stood for (honesty and protocol), disappointment in himself as a trustable soldier, and concern for the punishment that was going to follow suit right after he told the team. He already had to fight for his trust among the members under Prime, and Prime himself, and he was really not looking forward to losing it again. At the thought of Optimus learning of his unruly secrets, his spark felt like it was tightening up in its chamber. It will be a hectic day to go through when the rest find out, sure, but when it came to Optimus, that’s what hurt him the most. He did not want to see that day in which Prime, the one that held all respect and admiration and honor in Smokescreen’s mind, lost faith in him. To Smokescreen, that would tear him apart.

 _“Where_ did you find her?” Ratchet pulled him out of his thoughts with a start. He groaned like he repeated the question numerously throughout his process of thought. The cranky interrogator did not delay and jumped right into subject with a clunky stomp closer to the former Elite, “There is a clear indication of harm inflicted from raw _energon,_ and undeniable evidence of abuse and neglect. On top of that, an irrefutable sign of _Cybertronian_ calligraphic branding. There is no need to continue this perjury.“ Ratchet warned, losing patience and stepping in close, ready to lock horns with Smokescreen with no concerns about space. Smokescreen returned the venom by squinting his eyes slightly at him, but almost let his mouth quirk into a grin at the shift of something in his peripherals. He had an idea to what it was, due to the blurry white and spots of green and red. _‘About time,’_ Smokescreen thought and held back a small cheer when he figured Wheeljack would cut in and get him out of this fiasco.

“So I ask again, _where did you find the human_?” Ratchet nearly demanded.

“None other than the Nemesis,” The two look over the entrance of the hangar to see Wheeljack walking in. Smokescreen’s relief crumbles completely, thinking the wrecker wouldn’t have said a thing. Ratchet spluttered at his words like they were completely crazy.

“What? Folly. How would _you_ know? You’re not involved in this,” The medic dropped his previous fiery stance by resting his metallic servos on his hips with a questioning glare. Wheeljack simply leaned casually against the frame of the wall, crossing his arms over his chassis, a smug grin slowly growing on his lip-plates.

“Oh, I’m more involved than you know. How else could we have boarded?” Wheeljack hinted with a kink of his brow.

“Boarded?” Ratchet blinks, and Wheeljack only responds by pointing a finger skyward.

    And it only took barely a nanoclick to piece it all together. He finally remembered that Wheeljack had a ship, of course that made docking at the warship a possibility. So he _did_ hear some turbines thrumming outside of the base earlier. What he didn’t understand was their reason to do such a thing. Before Ratchet could speak up about it, Wheeljack cut him off coolly.

“Is tiny still kickin’?” He leaves Ratchet squinting at him, a little irritated at how he ‘subtly’ changed the subject.

“Yes, no thanks to you,” The rescue vehicle berated under his breath.

“Actually, I helped bring her here. It’s _all_ thanks to me.” He gets a side-glance from Smokescreen, who remained silent for a record amount of time. Smokescreen was still stunned at how fast all this secretive information was falling off his tongue, showing no fear of consequence. “Oh, and him too.”

“So you _both_ are to blame,” Ratchet chided with a fatigued shake of his head and a pinch at the bridge of his nose.

    He was internally readying himself for the mounds of trouble they were going to drag into attention, adding onto the many problems already weighing on his shoulders. Smokescreen was orderly, yet insatiably rambunctious. Wheeljack was rebellious and uncouth. With the odd pair-up between the two of them, was of course, double the amount of madness. Ratchet wasn’t sure he had the composure for it. He shoots anyway, “What were you doing on the decepticon air vessel?”

Smokescreen stands in silence, stumped on what to say. Wheeljack decided to speak up before Ratchet came to any rash conclusions.

“It’s fine, Doc. Sometimes, when there’s not much going on, we kinda just _hop on and excavate_.” This did not settle the old bot’s nerves any more than it meant to.

“ _Fine?_ You think jumping on a _heavily-guarded warship to explore just for the thrill of it_ was a good idea?”

“We don’t just do it for the thrill,” Smokescreen chuckled nervously, though that sign of ‘not realizing the seriousness of the conversation’ did not ease his agitation in the least. “though what else is more thrilling than doing something you’re not supposed to do...”

"He's got the idea," Wheeljack tossed him a lazy grin and gave him a rough pat on the back. “We find some valuables here and there. Last time, an unguarded energon deposit. Though we didn’t come back with the goods ‘cause ol’ Jackhammer was runnin’ on empty..."

"Why do you need to take it straight from the warship when we're doing fine with locating Decepticon mines?" His eyes narrowed like he was staring at the most thick-headed pair of morons in the universe.

"Why collect energon ore scraps when its all processed and just begging to be taken from the ship? Saves _time."_ Wheeljack just grins at the sight of Ratchet quietly seething at him. The rowdy wrecker was really just doing this to scare the 'cons in the very place they believe they were safe. ‘ _Why not take advantage of what is left out in the ‘open’?_ ’ He thought.

"It may save time, but scouring the mines saves _lives._ There's less of a chance of getting scrapped, we're already outnumbered as it is, you can never be too careful." Ratchet quibbled thoughtfully.

"Being careful wipes out all the opportunities." Ratchet squeezed the gap between his eyes in annoyance. He knew he could stand here and bicker with him for stellar-cycles and he would never come to admit that what he has been doing was dangerous and completely out of protocol. What bothered him even more was that there was a possibility that Wheeljack's risky ways would rub off on Smokescreen, and Smokescreen was already a handful all on his own. Wheeljack's idea of 'heroics' almost made him insane in Ratchet's eyes. Although he was tired of arguing with them, he didn't think it should go unpunished.

"Wait until Optimus hears about this," He heads towards the corridor to look for the ‘bot in question, but was stopped by a firm servo on his shoulder.

"Wait a sec!” Smokescreen jumped at the chance to save their hides. “W-we were also able to make a rough draft of the interior of the ship. We’ve been piecing it together over the past couple visits.” He blurted out as he passed a datapad over to him.

"No doubt the drones 're gonna be piecing themselves back together, too." A chuckle escaped from Wheeljack and Smokescreen gave him a high-five. Ratchet's just stood there, an optic twitching. Ratchet pondered on whether or not he should brig them, though the useful recon placed in his hands was the only thing that kept him from doing so. Should he be thankful?

"How did you find where the warship was located?" Entreated the field medic.

"Got 'em on radar," Wheeljack threw his thumb over his shoulder, referring to his Jackhammer left just outside by the hangar entrance. "I may have chipped their ship," His voice dripped with placid spunk, showing a hint of his known advantage. "...Though it loses connection when they leave the atmosphere," Ratchet mindfully took note of that information.

“How did you even manage to come back in one piece? It's obvious that you two were seen. ”

"Sure, we were seen, but we took out all who _did_ see us before they send out a high alert." ‘Jackie leisurely acted like the joints in his servo were more interesting than the topic at hand. This made Ratchet’s optics squint a little tighter at him.

"And anyway, my signature weapon sure does get you out of almost anything," Smokescreen boasted, holding up his wrist to show the phase-shifter wrapped around it.

"Just because you have that doesn't mean you'll evade every problem you run into."  

"It has so far," Ratchet rolls his eyes and turned to Wheeljack for his excuse, but he shook his head,

“This was Smoke’s turn this time around. One goes inside and one mans the ‘hammer for look-out or when things get rough.” Wheeljack pushes himself off of the concrete wall he was leaning against and makes his way over to them, "Though I hate being the one to wait it out, that's when my trigger finger gets that unbearable itch."

Ratchet grunts at this. "On top of your _fatuous_ suicide missions," He began, "You leave the other without any backup? How do you know the one inside is in danger?"

"You don't." Wheeljack avowed, resulting in a groan from the racecar.

"When you say it like that..." Smokescreen mumbled in his direction. He certainly wasn't one to sugar-coat incidents to get off the hook. He really did make things difficult. "Smokescreen's a big bot, he gets outta there every time. Unscathed. Literally," He points at the phaser. Ratchet was aware that these two were irresponsible, but this was just unbearably shameful. He almost felt like laughing at how utterly moronic they proved to be. Almost pitiful. Smokescreen sensed Ratchet's disappointment.

"You should be happy we went through this today." He offered, eyes soon falling into the direction of the occupied stretcher. “That’s how I found her,” He took a moment of silence before he continued. “I just phased through the wall and there she was.”

    All three slipped into a phase in the patient’s direction. Ratchet reflected on how even under these trying circumstances, they managed to save a life. He was grateful for that piece of the puzzle, but he still felt that this level of secrecy among the troops should be addressed. He only thought it was fair to tell Optimus everything.

"All this time..." He shakes his head disappointedly. “I wouldn’t say Optimus would approve.”

"He wouldn't. That's why he's not going to hear a word about this." Wheeljack glances between Ratchet and Smokescreen, silently making them agree to keep this between themselves, though obviously Ratchet would be having none of that. "And for once, don't worry about what the big bot's gonna think,"

    Though, with that said, he knew Ratchet was unable to do that. He always cleared every little thing he has done and will do with Optimus, it's the least he could do for the one he respected, and he was sure that was all Optimus wanted from him. Knowledge of what was going on. He had the right to know everything and anything his team mates were getting themselves involved in.

"I'm afraid my loyalty is insurmountable to even process." He steps up to ‘Jackie. "Let me remind you, that I wouldn't be putting other lives in danger for the sake of _processed energon,"_

"Exactly. And then tiny over there would've been dead while you hid behind your screen, like an oblivious, obedient little-" Wheeljack's attention fell to Smokescreen's hand that clasped around his wing. He took the signal with a slight nod, and decided to revise his words. "Sometimes you gotta put some lives in danger... We saved a life for Primus sake." Wheeljack didn't feel like he had the patience to stand around and have his loyalty questioned and be judged and ridiculed by a stingy old mech. Ratchet turns to the human again, surprised by the fact that he made a good point, but truthfully he was never one to side with those who thrived on danger. He casts a last glance at the two,

"We will continue this later. Now is not the time. Right now we should worry about the human's condition." Ratchet inwardly sighed, turning his attention back to his laborious activities at his work station. Smokescreen and Wheeljack exchange looks, and the Ferrari eventually turns his heel to leave, grumbling as he heads towards the way he entered. He knew he wouldn't be able help anybody by standing around. Before he leaves, Ratchet speaks over his shoulder to admonish him.

"Optimus may learn about this whether you like it or not," Wheeljack stopped in mid-step to shift his helm to listen with an open audio. "And he will not take your acts of sedition lightly."

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Uh ohs, Smoke 'n' Jackie's recent scare-tactic-game is thrown into the spotlight! Drama, drama, drama. Sorry if this seems long and boring. The lil lady will be waking up in the next chapter, no doubt about it. Just gotta throw the building-up plot bits in there. Usually fluff is x10 more powerful when it sprouts out of a sticky situation such as this. Do you find this story's beginning dark? Is it tolerable? ...It's possible this ain't event the beginning. 
> 
> Don't be afraid to comment, and thanks for the support :)


	5. Promise

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Optimus has a good talk with Smokescreen.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry I took so long to post this chapter! Has it been a year? Close. Just blame senior year. Took all my time away. I will be posting lots more chapters now since I'm free. Enjoy! :D

   

 

    There was a thick silence in the room after all was said between the three Autobots. Wheeljack was long gone, Bumblebee and Smokescreen uncomfortably remained standing near June, and the human kept alive by machines, their brows knit in worry, and Ratchet turned back to his earlier duties (or at least tried to). The only thing that rang through the quiet aura was the faint sound of beeping and hissing, making it difficult to try keeping their minds off the gruesome form in the hospital bed sitting against the concrete wall. Jack, Miko and Raf collected together on the balcony, not sure on what to say. Witnessing that argument was really unsettling.

“Awkward...” Miko piped up, scratching the nape of her neck in discomfort. “Is it bad that I don’t think ‘Jackie and Smokes are in the wrong here? I mean, they never got caught on the ship and they were just havin’ a lil fun kickin’ ‘con aft! They ended up saving someone in all of that, too! I call that a win-win.”

“But they never told Optimus,” Rafael added, pushing his thick glasses at the frame between his eyes. “If I were him, I’d want to know about it. They could have gotten themselves hurt, maybe killed.”

    Miko rolled her eyes at Raf’s mature dispute, and Jack nodded between the two, knowing he agreed somewhat on both terms. He side-glanced at Smokescreen standing a little ways away from the terrace, who was staring at the floor overwhelmed with guilt and disappointment in himself. Boy, his good ol’ pal Smokey got himself in a big heap of trouble, didn’t he? He knew Smokescreen would fall apart when it came to breaking the news to his one and only hero, big O.P. Did he ever think this part through when he first decided to team up with Wheeljack?

    Silence overcame the hangar again, and while Ratchet tried to fixate his concentration on his work at the monitor, all he could think about was Optimus. He wondered what he would do after he learned about this. Will he exile Smokescreen? That doesn’t seem like a very Optimus thing to do. Will he assess the situation with open arms? That sounds like the Optimus way. Ratchet wouldn’t admit it, but he was kind of hoping for the first one. He has just grown so weary of dealing with rambunctious youngsters who didn’t know how to control themselves.

    The medic mindfully knew that Optimus was out on patrol, and he was returning at nightfall. Usually that was around the time where Ratchet would be in recharge, and he wanted to be present during the grand reveal, maybe watch Smokescreen get scolded a little, since Primus knows no one listens to the ‘grumbly old doc-bot’, and no one ignores his words more than Smokescreen. He didn’t feel like he could hold this in until then without blowing a fuse, anyway. Should he call him in? No, he could possibly be interrupting him in something. He really didn’t know what to do in this predicament. He decided on peeking over his shoulder to burn the mopey racecar with his glare, maybe intimidating him enough to make him want to call in the big bot himself, but Smokescreen was currently too busy holding his sulking optics to the floor in shame to even notice. Oh, how incredibly awkward.

* * *

 

    The crystal blue sky was tainted heavenly by hues of orange and red at its horizon, and the rocky edges of the canyon glowed from the resting sun’s rays. Wisps of thin clouds sprayed over the canvas of the atmosphere, gently roaming across the border with the high winds. The emptiness of the abandoned highway allowed the rumbling peterbilt to speed down the straight road, catching tumbleweeds under his tires. As the bright orb above slowly made its way down, Optimus knew it was time for him to return to base.

    He was aware that he was only a few miles away from the column of canyon rock that harbored his ‘home’, so he could finally delve deep into the calming quietness and somewhat relax along the way. This particular road was always deserted, so he wouldn’t be running into anything down this path. He internally switched on the radio in his dashboard, and sounds of soft piano filled his empty cab, causing Optimus to slightly sink on his axles in comfort. Believe it or not, Optimus would listen to human music stations found on the radio in his time spent alone, and the one he was fond of the most was the one that played sounds called “classical”. It was very soothing to him, though he could never be completely relaxed at any point in his life, being Prime and all.

    In the far distance, he could see the Autobot base, and the sun was setting so low that he had to turn on his headlights to see through the growing darkness. Quickly, he took a turn into the opening entrance doors of the hangar, promptly shutting off his stereo to silence his own entry. He rolled into the main lobby, viewing the unmanned monitor and the kid’s empty makeshift living room on the militia balcony. He was familiar with how this was the usual time for Ratchet to leave his post to recharge, hence the desolation of his station. Of course the young, human trio would be home at this late of evening as well, and with Bumblebee, Arcee, and Bulkhead recharging also. But he was confused to see that Smokescreen was still up.

    Optimus’s vehicular form unfolded and formed his bipedal shape, granting him his limbs to stretch. He twisted his torso to relieve the cramps that built up in his joints from being in his semi form for four hours straight. Smokescreen’s worrisome eyes caught his, and he decided to speak to break the silence.

“Good evening, Smokescreen.” Prime greeted with a deep voice of genuine silk.

“H-hey.” He responded, internally cursing at his stuttering.

    It was silent after that, with Optimus slightly scrutinizing his shifting stance and fumbling behavior, immediately concerned. Smokescreen stood rather oddly, placing his pedes in a precise position as to where his bulky ankles would completely conceal the female in the stretcher as Optimus strode towards the hallway of the barracks. The former elite guard brought a flat servo to his forehead in salute, giving a nervous smile, praying that Optimus would dismiss it as he walked into the barracks, but it only made him more suspicious. He never wanted to feel suspicious around the young warrior, but he knew something was up. He could feel it. He stopped in his place, staring at him. He was confused on how orderly and rigid he was, since that wasn’t the usual Smokescreen. ‘Maybe he feels the need to be formal today’, he thought.

“At ease, soldier.” Optimus requested softly, and he obeyed, bringing his servo down from his face, but he didn’t move from his spot. He stood so stiffly and wore a forced grin on his face, clearly twitching from tension. Yep, something was up.

“...Is there something you wish to inform me about, Smokescreen?” He asked, voice laced with mild concern.

    The bot in question simply sighed in defeat. There was a moment of uncomfortable silence, and that’s when he finally hears it. A gentle, cadence of beeping and muffled wheezing coming from behind Smokescreen’s pedes. He allowed the sounds to fill Optimus’s audios, watching as an expression of bewilderment washed over his face, knowing full well that he can’t hide it anymore. He knew he wouldn’t for long.

“Smokescreen, please stand to the side.” Optimus orders in a stern calmness that Smokescreen internally hoped for.

    He did as he was told and shuffled to the side with his digits pressing into his firm palms, averting his eyes from Prime’s look of utter shock and surprise, mouth agape. His optics soaked in the tragedy opened before him; a frail, battered Earth creature barely clinging onto life. Behind his regal reservedness, although hinting an overflow of anxiety, his spark felt like it pooled into his pedes. He tore his optics away to gape at Smokescreen, whose face shown every bit of remorse and displeasure that swirled in his chest.

“What is this?” He inquired softly, hoping not to wake the human, if she even could given the grave appearance of her state.

    Smokescreen flinched slightly, not prepared to explain. Optimus understood from his actions that he was afraid to tell him, and he did not want his troops holding back information out of fear of the possible consequences. The only way to tend to the problem was to do so with little judgement and crudity. He wished that his fellow Autobots would be entirely comfortable with announcing trying times such as this, so he was a little swayed by the fact Smokescreen felt even a tad bit hesitant towards him. Smokescreen held back the urge to look into his eyes, afraid to see anger, but instead he found those glowing azure eyes to be filled with patience and gentle eagerness.   

“All a dream, oooooh!~” Smokescreen gracelessly tried to lighten up the mood, waving his servos lazily in the air, quickly dropping his playful remark once Optimus’s eyebrows fell flat into a small grimace of disapproval. He exhaled an anxious sigh. He eventually came to the conclusion that it was best to own up to his actions, it was the right thing to do. “Okay, lemme explain.” He heaved in a big breath, ready to blurt out everything in one go.

“Me-and-Wheeljack-have-been-doing-this-thing-where-we-fly-up-to-the-Nemesis-on-his-Jackhammer-and-play-a-game-called-‘find-the-energon-vault’-and-we’ve-been-doing-this-for-so-long-that-I-drew-up-a-map-of-the-interior-of-the-ship-and-surprisingly-we-haven’t-been-caught! I-borrowed-the-phase-shifter-for-every-game-and-that’s-how-we’ve-been-able-to-do-it! So-the-last-time-I-was-up-there-I-ran-into-this-human-chained-up-in-a-lab-and-rescued-her-because-she-was-in-trouble! The end!” Smokescreen nearly keeled over and died. Even Blurr himself would be flabbergasted by that amount of lingual speed!

    Now that everything weighed on his shoulders was released, he could only watch as Optimus sorted all of the information through his mind. There was nothing said, and Optimus had an unreadable face that made Smokescreen want to hide under a rock.

“I…” Optimus started, for once uncertain of what to say. “I never thought you would attempt such unruly deeds, Smokescreen, especially without my consent. I am terribly… alarmed.”

    Smokescreen shut his eyes and turned his head to the side, finding the disappointment in his leader’s voice to be incredibly heart-wrenching. He didn’t know if he would prefer yelling over this crippling softness of discontent from the one he idolized greatly, it seemed to hurt so much more. Optimus took a step towards him, placing a gentle servo on his armored shoulder. Smokescreen soon gathered his courage to look into his optics like that of a weeping puppy-dog. Optimus sighed.

“You are lucky that your risky endeavors unearthed such a timely crisis,” A wave of relief washed over Smokescreen’s eyes. “You did the right thing bringing her here. You saved this female’s life when no one else could.” Smokescreen managed a little smile.

“So does that mean I can still-”

“No.” Optimus interrupts sternly. Smokescreen chuckled.

“Got it. Just playin’.”

“We will speak more about this in the morning, I am sure you are in need of a re-charge.” Optimus gingerly leads the other into the hallway to the barracks, ready to sleep as well. Smokescreen was so relieved.

“Yeah. And I’m really sorry, Optimus. I was stupid. I won’t do anything like that again. Promise.”

“I know.”

    They separated themselves to enter their own individual berthrooms, nodding to one another before they closed their doors. Optimus slipped into the arms of sleep rather quickly, but Smokescreen was still leaning against his door, waiting. After a few minutes, he snuck out from his room and into the hallway, returning to the main lobby. He felt wrong leaving the human alone out in the open with only a thin sheet for ‘protection’. His pedes tiptoed ever so gently towards the earthling in the hospital cot, careful not to make a noise. The sounds of the machines welcomed him, and he took the empty space right next to her at the foot of the bed, sliding down the concrete wall and landing on his behind. With his optics glued on her sleeping form, he could only ponder on the nasty things those cruel ‘cons did that led to her disfigurement. He hardly knew the half of it.

    He was lucky to have stumbled upon her, and he internally cheered himself on for doing so. He understood that she was his responsibility from now on, and he was more than willing to take on that challenge. As he mulled through the moments, his spark chamber’s thrumming slowly began to match the tempo of the girl’s oxygen machine, making him grow sleepy. It soon became difficult for him to keep his optics online, and he lolled his head on his shoulder to keep his weary eyes fixated on the human. It was not long before he fell into recharge.

* * *

 

    In the early morning, Optimus and Smokescreen carried on their talk as promised. Smokescreen admired how tenderly and smoothly he spoke to him, and his respect for his leader grew even more throughout the discussion. He said, although they managed to save a life, he was unhappy that he and Wheeljack were doing such dangerous feats under his nose, (though he expected that from the wrecker). He was sincerely concerned for their safety, and he was genuinely relieved that no one got hurt in the many trials they've endured on the Nemesis. In the end, Optimus decided that Smokescreen’s punishment was that he couldn't go out on missions for a while, around a month, and he was ‘grounded’ in the hangar. Of course that made the troublemaker groan and pout, but it was a better penalty than he was expecting. Optimus also took away the phase shifter and placed it back inside its containment chamber. When they returned to the main lobby, Optimus told Ratchet everything, and even said that he could assign some chores to Smokescreen.

 

“Great, finally someone can tend to those dirty floors in the corridor!” Ratchet exclaimed with a small grin, pulling out a human-sized mop and bucket, handing it to Smokescreen. The others in the room snickered at his distraught gasp.

“Wait, what?! What am I supposed to do with this toothpick?!” The racecar cried out, wiggling the tail of the mop in the air.

“Clean, obviously.” Acree answered. “But don’t worry, you got a whole month to do it.”

    Bulkhead laid a hand on his belly as he erupted in laughter, and Bumblebee leaned on him as he chirped in hysterics, both relishing in Smokescreen’s unfortunate position and were so dearly glad they weren't him. Bulkhead kept trying to speak but just broke out into giggles again.

“Better get started, champ!” Bulkhead jeered.

    Smokescreen dramatically whined up to the ceiling as he turned and walked into the hallway, trudging his feet while heading towards the very end to start scrubbing the floors and walls. As he walked by the dormant girl in the bed, he was at least satisfied to be in the same general building as her, since she is always somehow settled in the back of his mind, always worrying him. Optimus sent everyone out to their posts, allowing Arcee, Bulkhead, Bumblebee, and himself to transform and head out of the space bridge Ratchet opened.

    All commotion settled once the portal closed, and the medic was left in his own company at the main console, with frustrated grumbles emitting from the hallway where Smokescreen worked. That made the corner of Rachet’s mouth curl upwards just a tad bit.

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Did I say the girl would be introduced in this chapter? My bad. Next chapter, for sure. Trust me on this one.


	6. Identity

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Awakened and aware.

 

    Comatose eyes began to fidget from a troubling dream, squinting tightly when a wave of pain washed over her head. _Beep, beep, beep._ The sound was puzzling in her sleepy daze. The dull ache quickly brought her to consciousness, but she didn’t dare try opening her eyes, dreading to see herself surrounded by darkness again. She felt she could still be in that foul prison, but after waking up a bit more, she felt some light on her eyelids. She also felt very comfortable on her back, feeling soft and cushioned, other than the cold steel floor she used to curl up on. This air smelled fresh and natural, unlike the putrid filth she breathed in before. Was she dead? Was she in heaven now?

    Her scalp gave another throb, and she went to jerk her hand up to soothe it, but there was resistance. She finally opened her sore eyes to see that her wrist had needles in them, telling her she had some medical help. Her arm seemed so thin and pale that she barely recognized it as her own. She was safe, alive. She inhaled the sweet oxygen the mask on her face provided her, barely registering it was on her skin since it was so numb. She looked to her other arm to see it was wrapped up entirely in bandages, concerning her briefly, and she quickly remembered those recent unfortunate events. She flinched at the flashing memories flooding in, but tried to swat them away by getting distracted by her new environment, trailing her eyes up from her body and along the walls, noting all the grey. So much cement. She wasn’t sure if that was a good or bad thing, though it sure didn’t seem very inviting.

    _Beep, beep, beep._ It came from her side again, a noise that only made her think of hospital devices the tubes in her veins would be connected to. She looked to her side to confirm it, watching as her heart-rate spike up and down on the screen. Her eyes wandered again, suddenly falling upon the white and red stranger standing a few feet away with his back faced in her direction. Her fear came back again...

    Ratchet gave a small grunt as his bulky, metallic fingers tapped at the computer holo-board, feeling a bit irritable at the particular set of code he was translating. He has been working diligently on it for almost two hours, and he was only finished deciphering half. Half! But he wasn’t giving up now, for he found that it was coordinates to either an artifact or something greater. He didn’t really know for sure, all he knew was that it was important. The title of the file so far was scattered, only reading as ‘_a_s  d_ _pl_c_ _ _n_’. Of course he couldn’t decipher it with that many blanks.

    He squinted at the green monitor, trying to fit letters into it to make sense of it, but it was no use. He had to wait and debug it more. He had these pleasant hours to himself at his prized post with pure absence of distracting sounds, since Smokescreen was all the way at the far end of the barracks, it was almost like he wasn’t even there. Thinking of earlier, he was a little surprised at how small Smokescreen’s punishment turned out to be. Being stuck in the base to clean seemed unequal to months of secretive Nemesis raids that could have gotten themselves and possibly the rest of the team in danger. Ratchet knew he probably missed a lot in that conversation Optimus and Smokescreen had last night, enough to make this level of compensation look inadequate and unsuitable.

    His train of thought was broken when he heard some stirring, noises of cloth sliding against cloth. He froze, listening to small mumbles of disorientation, knowing full well by now that the human a distance away from his feet was awake. Another uneasy thing he realized was that he was the only one present in the room, and he wouldn’t know what to do with the human if she started screaming. He was tempted to contact June, or maybe even the rest of the Autobots, but he found it was too late for any of those options when he heard the human sit up slightly, and he visualized her in his mind looking around and falling upon him.

    Her skull pulsed in pain again as she crushed her palms to her forehead, noticing that her head was wrapped in bandages. With her bandaged arm, she pondered on why her fingers felt so unresponsive, she didn’t even know she was moving them or not. During her new alertness, Ratchet was still by the screen, pondering on how to approach the situation. He tried to hide his uncertainty with a mask of bitter nerve, pretending he wasn't even aware of her awakening. The girl gaped at the alien at the consol while he ‘worked’, making him grow more bothered at the sensation of a pair of curious eyes on his back.

"I think I liked you better when you were asleep." Ratchet finally said, never turning towards the girl in the stark-white gurney.

    The girl blinked at him for a moment, not entirely sure if he was talking to her or not. She was confused as to how, with a disturbingly tall metal being in the room, her gruesome torture-treatment wasn’t continuing. Where was she now? She had no idea, but she greatly feared Ratchet, thinking he was another cruel creature ready to poke and prod her in the name of evil science. Where did that purple mono-eyed titan go? And the red one with the creepy stare? Was she even in the same place? She assumed not, and hoped not, since she was connected to noisy machines that were keeping her alive.

    Curiosity was building up in her throat to the point where she couldn’t keep silent, making her bring her hands up to her face to slip the oxygen mask off her mouth.

“Where am I?” She asked in a small voice, fully reflecting how she currently felt.

“...A safe place.” Ratchet answered, still appearing busy at the computer.

“Why aren’t you hurting me?” The girl shivered, and Ratchet’s tinkering with the consol came to a halt. The question confused him to his core, and with realization, he was saddened.

“You want me to?” He asked, acting oblivious. He turned to look at the girl, he saw worry in her eyes. It had come to his attention that she might have believed that all of his people were cruel and torturous, since her only contact so far was with hurtful Decepticons, and she thought of himself just the same. He hoped she would trust him enough to accept his explanation, “Oh, right, you are probably not aware of the factions”

“You were captured by Decepticons, and I am not like them. I am.... ‘good’.”

"They said the same thing. That they were the good side.” She frowned, averting her wavering eyes to her arm wrapped in gauze.

"I don’t doubt that one... But that proves that they live up to their names. Decepticons, they deceive and manipulate.” His voice grew tight from the rising irritation. “They are not the 'good side'. We Autobots stand for --"

    He was abruptly interrupted by the sound of the main comm opening up on his screen, and he was relieved to see his leader’s image in the right-hand corner, equalizer spiking as his voice came through.

||“Ratchet, we are ready to return, please open a bridge back.”||

    On cue, he made his way to a lever that was near the entrance and pulled it downwards, all the while peaking the human’s interest. As the lever went down, a shrill sound resonated in the air and a swirl of green and blue formed into a circle, fizzing and sparking with energized currents. It was a thrilling thing to witness, although frightening (because of the unknown). Before she could guess what it’s purpose was, two large figures began to trudge their way through. She sank a little deeper into her pillow when she realized she was now outnumbered by these potential harm-mongers.

    The white and red one, who she assumed was Ratchet, looked to them and brought their attention to the girl.

"The human is awake." Ratchet said, pointing to the one in question.

    The robotic beings who came from the portal, a red and blue one accompanied by a yellow one, turn their optics towards her in the hospital bed. They gave expressions of surprise as they begin to slowly advance. With every step the robots made to her, the deeper she pressed back into the bed. As they came closer, she observed their image and mindfully weighed them on the danger scale of 1-10. The robot by the computer seemed like a 6, seeming docile and distracted, but still very large and could decide to step at her at a moment of choosing.

    The red and blue fellow looked to be the tallest of the three, and the sturdiest of composure. He oozed regalness, and even with his height and weight, his steps were gentle and controlled. The thought of how elegant he appeared was trumped by her concern of his growing closeness, and she decided to give him a 9 because of intimidation.

    By his side, the yellow hostile was only up to the other’s midsection. His face was the most unreadable, since his mouth was hidden by a covering and his eyes were bigger and brighter. He looked a little spunky, like he still had a bit of adrenaline working through him. She gave him a 7.5 on the scale.

    When they reached her bedside, the taller one, ever so softly, rested on one knee, attempting to be eye-level with her. He noticed her uncomfortableness, and spoke to her in the most delicate tone he could manage.

"We will not hurt you." His voice was like silk, and the sound dulled her pain with its softness. Hearing that calmed her, and his approach felt non-threatening and soothing. "I am Optimus Prime. This is Bumblebee." He gestured towards the yellow bot, and upon hearing his own name, twiddled his metal digits in a wave. Optimus turns his head and points to the bot at the computer.

“That is Ratchet.” At that said, a grunt came from the monitor area. “Now, may I ask what your name is?” Optimus asked.

There was a slight hesitation, but her mind quickly found it. “B-Bonnie.”

“Bonnie.” He repeated, as if he was trying out her name on his tongue. She liked the way it sounded in his voice. He continued, “You may feel greatly perturbed, but do not be afraid, you are in good hands now.”

    Though she regretted falling for previous promises of safety, she believed Optimus’s words from how soft and sincere they were spoken, no one could fake that. She decided to let her guard down, trusting them with all she had left. They could tell she was trying to adjust to them, and was beginning to piece together that the place she was then and the place she is now are completely different. She was safe from the torment.

"...Thank you for rescuing me." Bonnie said, meeting everyone’s eyes.

"You needn't thank me, for I am not the one who brought you here." Optimus crooned.

    She points at Bumblebee, wondering if it was his doing, and he shakes his head. It doesn’t take long for Optimus to assume she wanted to thank her saviour in person, and he rightfully respected that.

"Smokescreen is currently at the far end of the passageway, I will get him for you," He stood up from the floor, eclipsing her in his shadow again, making his way for an exit. "In the mean time, please remain in bed to prevent retrogression of your wounds."

    His voice was so gentle and sincere, she couldn't even think of going against him. Optimus strode into the hallway, soon escaping eye-sight. Bumblebee still remained by a few feet from her bed, not sure on what to do, since Bonnie was staring at him. He tried speaking to her, though it came out as a series of beeps and whirs, making one of her eyebrows shoot up in question. This made him go for the alternative route of temporary entertainment, simply bringing his servos to his face, playing a little peek-a-boo. At least it brought out a little smile.

    Optimus returns shortly, with a whole new robot that the girl hadn’t seen before. Gosh, how many were there? The white and blue mech that followed alongside Optimus appeared elated to see her awake, which made her stare up at him in wonder.

“Hey.” His voice sounded young and tinged with relief. He didn’t really know what else to say.

“This is Smokescreen. He was the one who extricated you from the Decepticon war ship.” Optimus gestures him to walk closer to her, which he does, and he kneels to her like a valiant knight.

“Guilty as charged.” Smokescreen smiled down at her. He had so many things he wanted to say, but he didn’t know where to start. Before he could begin, much to his surprise, he saw her eyes water to the point where they poured down her cheeks, and her hands clasped together in utter praise.

“Thank you. Thank you _so_ much.” She nearly sobbed, making Smokescreen feel sympathetically upset.

    He did so much more than he knew, and for that she was entirely grateful. She would have suffered for far longer, and would have eventually encountered a painfully slow death. He attempts to console her, but his large hands try to keep their distance in fear of hurting her, he didn’t want her to cry. She sees his emotional conflict at the sight of her tears, and she wipes them away quickly.

“No problem. I am glad you’re okay.” He puts on a grin, and she does the same back. “Bonnie, right?”

    She nods up to him, and he lifts his hand into her direction, starting off slow so he wouldn’t spook her. He rested the tips of his digits on the railing of her bed, allowing her to choose to put her own hand on his. After she did, they shared another awkwardly pleasant smile.

**  
Safe.**

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It takes a while to get this story going, so in mean time y'all should check out this really good love story fic I found between Optimus (Bayverse) and a human girl, (link : https://www.fanfiction.net/s/7193867/1/Twisted) It's so cute, I swear. I think it made me cry a few times... Yeah, it's that good.


	7. Hatred

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Revelation.

 

“ --Keep your eyes on the pen,” June requested, holding said pen upright between her index and thumb while waving it slowly before Bonnie’s face. Bonnie followed it with her eyes, watching it slowly go side to side. “Good.”

    June was called down to base by Optimus not too long after the stranger awakened, hoping she would give her a check-up. It had been almost three days since the unconscious girl was taken to base, and today was finally the day she could meet her and maybe figure out what on Earth happened. June brought up her medical tote, and upon arrival, she quickly began to do what she did best. She checked Bonnie’s pulse, her eye-coordination, and even her throat with a wooden stick. Now, she was ready to move onto the more gruesomely problematic injuries on her body; her head, neck, and arm.

“So, Bonnie,” June began, slipping the pen back into her scrub pocket. “I heard you were found on the ‘con ship. I gotta ask… What were you doing on there?”

    Bonnie started to scratch at her scalp in silence, pondering on how and where to start her story. She looked up to see everyone staring at her, eagerly waiting for a response, and that just made her all the more nervous. Her hazel eyes came back down to focus on her fiddling hands intertwined in her lap, having the anxious aura gnaw on her mind for a few moments, sifting through her memories for the answer. It all came to a blank. June acknowledged this prolonged internal strife, and thought the spotlight upon her was only making her thoughts cramp up ten fold.

“It’s okay, don’t force yourself. You went through a lot.” June comforted, laying a motherly hand on Bonnie’s forearm. Her soft eyes searched into the girl’s for _something_ , but saw only that they were befuddled and sad. She continued to scan over her face, taking in her fatigued features and her dirty-blond hair trapped underneath gauze spotted with seeping blood. “Just tell me what you know.”

“I don’t know how I got in there. One second I’m… I think I…” Bonnie paused for a little while longer, her mouth hanging open like she was trying to form words but they fell flat. “I think I was walking through my neighborhood?… And then… Um… Next thing I know, I wake up in a dark place. Everything before that is really all a big blur. I don’t know how I ended up in there.”

    She looked as if the frustration due to her fuzzy memories was discouraging, and June clicked her tongue at how hard she was trying.

“It _is_ possible somebody knocked her unconscious before she could even absorb the situation, maybe she was attacked from behind.” Ratchet suggested, resting a servo on the strut of his hip. Bonnie looked from him to the nurse, shrugging slightly and shaking her head in a complete loss for explanation, just going for that simple proposal.

“Alright. So you don’t have any clue as to why you were there?” June asked.

    She shook her head again, but she did have a few stubborn theories on what the reason was. Through all the long days(?) she was stuck in there, she had plenty of time to come to the conclusion that she must have been guilty of something terrible to deserve such an equally awful fate. The only problem was that she never knew exactly _what_ she was guilty _of_. It could have been a punishment for being a _killer_ or a _thief_ , but in Bonnie’s case, she could only be blamed of killing too many small ants that infested her home, or stealing her brother’s food from his plate at the dinner table. All of those assumptions were barely a crime to be penalized for, so she hadn’t had the slightest idea why she was neglected, starved, abused, and tortured. With all her rising insecurities and paranoia in that numbing darkness, she eventually drove herself into a mild madness that led her to believe she _deserved_ to get punished. Why _else_ would they do such things?

“Well, how long were you held captive?” June inquired, breaking Bonnie from her burrowing thoughts. Again, she shrugged.

“I had no way of knowing if it was night or day.” Bonnie answered, having a hard time keeping eye-contact with Ms. Darby with her own voice cracking so much from her embarrassing nervousness. “I didn’t get any food, so I probably couldn’t have been on there for more than three weeks.”

    Everyone in the room exchanged a few wary glances, and June sighed in pity. She could tell just by looking at Bonnie’s startlingly bony and frail body, that she was starving. At the mere mentioning of ‘food’, Bonnie’s stomach gave a fierce growl that made June turn away and make her way back to her car parked in the middle of the hangar. When she returned, she handed the girl in the medical cot a granola bar, making her eyes nearly pop out of her head from elated surprise.

“Good thing I didn’t eat it for lunch, looks like you need it more than I do.” It didn’t take long for the wrapper to be ripped off and the snack to be quickly consumed.

“Take it easy, your stomach might not handle it too well after being empty for so long,” June warned, cracking a smile at how happy she looked eating the granola, now licking the tips of her fingers to savor any flavor that might have clung to them. “I’ll bring more later, but you can’t eat too much right now, you’ll just purge it.”

“What did they do to you?” Smokescreen blurted out, attracting everyone’s attention from where he stood. He grew ansty of June bouncing around the biggest question that has been bugging him since the beginning, and he thought he had waited long enough. He assumed June would continue to slowly warm up to it, but he wanted to jump right to it as soon as possible.

“They--…” Bonnie tried, but with every question thrown at her, her thoughts kept locking up tight. June decided to broaden Smokescreen’s query by pointing out a certain injury.

“What are the marks on your neck from?” She pointed to the bruises sporting the sides of her throat, making Bonnie touch it in wonder. June already knew the answer, but she felt the urge to ask anyway, “...Did they hurt you?” Bonnie gulped.

“Yeah.” She murmured, her voice scratchy and solemn. “I was thrown around a lot. Dropped a few times.” She gestured to her head, insisting that it was linked to that. Her watering eyes fell back down to her hands, not wanting to elaborate on that answer. It brought back too many unwanted memories.

    No one spoke for a while, leaving Bonnie’s inner turmoil to intensify, and she dreaded any more questions that the others were sure to ask. She just didn’t want to reflect, or dwell, or remember. But she decided to tolerate it, since holding it all inside wasn’t going to make it better, but neither was speaking about it. Mind as well suck it up and answer some petty questions, since that was the least she could offer after having them save her life. After mulling over the currently unwanted interrogation, she could feel everyone’s eyes weighing on her bandaged arm, as if urging her to speak about it without having to articulate it. She cringes, her memories suddenly coaxed out from the back of her mind like a wave.

“This one may be hard to explain,” Bonnie stared off into the air, sucking in through her nose with a huff. She decided to start her story from the beginning. “...First I was in a prison cell, chained to the wall for the longest time. I was visited by a… thing. Every once in a while. And it had no face. It gave me water, but that was about it. Not once did it speak to me.”

    The Autobots that were gathered in the room knew almost immediately who she was talking about, but also involuntarily flinched every time she referred to the cybertronian in question as an ‘it’. She seemed to not address them as people, but as heartless objects only capable of savagery and evil. Sure, they were _Decepticons_ , but they were still entirely people. People with souls, minds, and traits that weren’t all that different to the Autobots… they were only ‘misguided’ and ‘corruptly manipulated’, as Optimus would put it. He always believed in his spark that they had potential to be good.

“Soundwave.” Optimus confirmed, a crease forming between his brows. Bonnie looked up to his stoic face.

    At the sound of the name, she remembered it spoken of before. She couldn’t recall when, but it had been stuck in her brain and it somehow linked itself to that specific robotic organism earlier. She heard it said in a gruff voice, one that sounded like it was coming from a radio or something with a bit of static. It wasn’t clear. She continues.

“Soundwave was the one who did this and this,” She points to her neck and head, meeting everyone’s somber orbs piercing her with concern. “He picked me up from the neck and just dropped me, and I guess I hit my head hard enough to pass out. When I woke up, I found myself in a weird lab. I think it was a lab, at least. My wrists and ankles had chains holding me down, and there was another robot poking me everywhere.”

“What did he look like?” Ratchet chimed in. Bonnie brought her hands close to her face and made a round shape with them, mimicking a bulbous contour.

“A big purple thing with a giant red eye.”

“Shockwave…” Ratchet identified, squinting at her unintentional referral to him as a ‘thing’.

“Then there was a red one.”

“Knockout…”

    Bonnie stiffened for a moment. She mindfully took note of their names, likely never letting herself forget because her hatred towards them burned brighter than any flame that rose within her. Those _things_ caused far too much damage to her life, and she may never forgive. June noticed a series of feelings scrolling across Bonnie’s face, relaying the emotional flurry that billowed in her mind. With those accursed names engraved on her shit-list, she fought back those angry ideas of vengeance, knowing full well she couldn’t do a damn thing about anything. What could a small human do to a towering, metal giant?

    She starts to slide her fingers across her bandaged arm, fearing what was left underneath that discolored gauze.

“Now this… _This_ is the hardest to explain. I honestly don’t know what happened myself,” Bonnie said, hearing someone take a clanky stomp closer, likely to listen better because her voice was almost down to a whisper. “On that lab table, they poured this weird green goop stuff on my arm. I couldn’t tell you what it was, but it burned like hell.”

“Green?” Ratchet repeated, and Bonnie nodded. The medic looked into the air as he thought, and his eyes widened in realization, turning towards Optimus. “You think it may be… Synthetic?”

“What else could it possibly be?” Said Smokescreen, looking to Ratchet. “It’s official, that Decepticreep is whipping up a formula too.”

“Shockwave can’t be daft enough to waste his time with that, it’s not hard to comprehend that it would never work like natural energon! It comes with dangerous effects! And why would he need to, when they are already teeming with energon reserves?”

“It sure looks like he’s done _some_ tinkering, since he used some on her,” June pitched in, ending their little dispute. “Shockwave’s ambition may be stopping him from giving up. And anyway, there will come a time where those reserves dry up. He’s looking ahead.”

    With that said, they shut up, but Bonnie didn’t notice that difference since she was spacing out during it all. She had her attention locked on her bandaged limb, tempted to unravel the wrap to see the damage done, but what stopped her was the uneasy fact of whether or not it would affect her for the rest of her life. The shrouded shape of it changed, rather than a naturally plump forearm, it appeared flat and hollowed. The mild sensation was a mixture of nothingness, yet tender burning. All this time she had been trying to move her fingers, even the slightest bit, but to no avail. She was heart-broken to find out she couldn’t. What did it all mean? Was it her mind playing tricks on her?

    Bonnie bent the arm at the elbow, thinking it was just her arm falling asleep, but shaking it didn’t do a thing. She looked over to June to see her watching, her mouth slanting into a small frown.

“...I… I can’t m-move my fingers…” Bonnie quivered, holding back tears that returned to the corners of her eyes. June’s face flooded with devastation, and her throat burned with the words she had to announce.

“We may have to…” June said in a hushed tone. “...Amputate.”

 

* * *

 

    The Nemesis hall monitors were searching high and low for the human and unknown accomplice that could have possibly still been on the ship. Knockout was among those on the hunt, grumbling to himself about how it was all the ‘purple loser’s’ fault and how he shouldn’t have to waste his energy over a squeamish little pest whose pathetic life wasn’t far from dying out. Shockwave however, was as determined as a raging bull taunted by a red cloak, trudging down corridor after corridor to reach his destination in a pace that was uncharacteristically quick.

    He didn’t think the loss of one specimen was catastrophic, though it did cost his time and efforts to capture. The only thing that’d be a problem was if the human and her partner in crime found the storage barracks containing the _others_ , and decided to release them. That was exactly what he was so worked up about, storming down the passageways of the ship. When he found himself in the storage barracks, he was faced with dozens of steel doors down a long hallway, like a collection of locked prisons lined along the walls.

    Shockwave slowed his steps, walking before a closed door that had a small opening he could peek into. Once he did, he recognized a small, huddled silhouette on the floor in the darkness, making his doubts disappear. This informed him that they never reached this section of the Nemesis, therefore his other human samples were still locked away. He felt at ease that he did not have to make up all the work and that he avoided a mishap. Shockwave continued down the barracks, checking every locked prison for a prisoner, and found them all untouched. He could just carry on as planned and study at his leisure.

    Now, the only thing he had to figure out was who took away his specimen #48.

 

* * *

 

 

    It has been nearly two days since the removal of Bonnie’s left forearm. The day of the surgery, she was a nervous wreck, imagining her future life filled with the struggles of a handicap and the fact that it was the hand she wrote with. Afterwards, it was almost like there wasn’t any change. It still had the same feeling, like it wasn’t even removed, though it clearly was. It was severed right at the elbow joint, and she was left with the stump of her upper arm that she could move freely with little pain. Nothing seemed more surreal than the empty void that once was a part of your own body, and she knew it would take a long time to get used to.

    The end of the stump was garnished with a white wrap, soaked with crimson at the tip. She didn’t like to look down at it all too much though, simply because it made her too unbearably sad. She was told it was going to take maybe more than a week to heal, but she felt so cramped laying in a bed all day, she was hoping she wouldn’t have to spend all the hours doing absolutely nothing.

    June had fed her well, helping her gain back the weight she lost. Ms. Darby also clothed her, allowing her to borrow a spare t-shirt and sweats for the time being. Bonnie couldn’t remember the last time she felt so… satisfied. Well, the whole ‘losing a limb’ thing wasn’t great, but she was just so happy that she was out of that prison cell. That satisfaction was canceled out by the constant anguish the loss of a limb gave. Could she really live her life like normal ever again with an eternal reminder of the torture she experienced?

    She had been placed in the same area she was in when she first woke up in the hangar, alongside the same cement wall. Ratchet was at his monitor as always, and Arcee, the blue bike she met a while back, was chatting with Jack. The others weren’t in the main room, but she heard footsteps entering in from the hallway and a voice following soon afterwards.

“Ugh, my brush broke!” Bonnie looked up to Smokescreen holding a dirty mop snapped clean in half, making his way to Ratchet. “Oh dear, how will I clean _now?_ ” His dramatic protest was drenched in sarcasm.

 

“You only made your job harder.” Ratchet replied, slowly shaking his head. “Get back to work, Smokescreen, or I’ll make you clean the rooms too.”

    Smokescreen perked up at that threat, obviously not wanting to do that on top of the hallway. He turned on his heel, not letting Ratchet win with his trivial blackmail. Instead of heading towards the barracks, he stopped near Bonnie, meeting her curious eyes.

“I think it’s time for a break!” He declared, not looking back to the huffing medic.

    Bonnie cracked a grin at Smokescreen when he bent down to greet her, happy that someone gave her some acknowledgement. People around this place were awful busy, and it didn’t feel like they had the time to sit down and talk with her. She needed the socialization. For Smokescreen, he felt the need to make the girl comfortable around him, enough for her to trust him and maybe consider him a friend. He always thought he was an expert of breaking the ice, but in this case, it was a slow and tricky process.

“How’s the arm?” Smokescreen asked, giving a crooked smile.

“Other than it being gone, it’s doin’ swell.” She chuckled, and he joined in awkwardly. “The whole ‘phantom limb’ thing is weird.”

“Hmm… Well, now I guess you can hold hands with _ghosts!_ ” Smokescreen joked, earning a quick bout of silence that made him think he said the wrong thing. Bonnie had a hard time holding in a laugh, and a scoff was heard from behind them.

“That’s not how it works, moron.” Arcee called out from the other side of the room. Bonnie spit out a snicker, and relieved Smokescreen of the idiot impression he made for himself, snorting along with her.

“I am tired of sitting in the bed all day though.” Bonnie said.

“Oh? Well, lemme help you with that one,” Smokescreen began to nudge his fingers at her legs, gesturing her to bring them off the bed to sit on the edge. “Don’t want you getting berthsores, now do we?”

“Bedsores?” Bonnie corrected, and the racecar shrugged.

    The frail blonde ripped her blankets to the side, sitting at the edge of the cot like the enthusiastic robot wanted, and she finally slipped her feet down to touch the cold cement floor with her toes. She stood for a moment, looking at Smokescreen with an expression of uncertainty, watching him scoot a few feet away. He knew she hadn’t walked for a long time, so this was a good opportunity to get that strength back, even if June wasn’t here to be of aid. He was here, and that was all the aid Bonnie needed in his eyes.

    As her jittery hand gripped the bed in support, she looked on to Smokescreen, who signaled her with his servos to come his way. She gave a small nod to him, taking on this challenge. Her tight grip on the sheets slackened, and she brought her single arm out to balance herself on her wobbly legs. Her stub stretched out, her mind still thinking it was useful in this situation. Smokescreen remained on one knee, his metal arms reaching out a little further to her in fear she’d fall before she got to him. Her feet slowly slid across the floor, closing the distance between them, but at the last moment, she almost tripped, but Smokescreen’s hand was right there to catch her.

“Wasn’t too bad, right?” He asked, laughing again as he patted a finger on her back in support. He pulled away when he saw her flinch in pain, confusing him for a second. “Oh, Primus, I forgot about your back… Sorry.”

“My back?” She cringed, hissing in discomfort. She sounded unaware about it, confusing Smokescreen even more. “What about it?”

    Ratchet fell out of his work-mindset, picking that query out of the conversation, deciding to help Bonnie understand. He turned their way, walking to the side so they would notice him.

“When you were brought here, we noticed there were lesions on your back. Very _precise_ markings burned into your skin.” Ratchet notified, witnessing shock and disbelief contort on the human’s face. “Ring any bells?”

 

    Bonnie only shook her head at that. There were more abnormalities on her body from those wretched ‘cons? What more could they possibly ruin? In the moments where Bonnie tried to bend her good arm behind her back to feel around, Ratchet tried to think up a way to show it to her, to prove that it was really there.

“What I meant by _precise markings_ is... Cybertronian script.”

“Cybertro-newhat?” Bonnie questioned, entirely in the dark.

“Cybertronian.” Ratchet repeated, pointing to himself, Smokescreen and Arcee, the only robotic organisms in the room. _So that was their alien species_ , she figured. Bonnie paused for a brevity, holding a finger up to stop him.

“So, what you’re saying is…” She held her breath. “I have been branded with _alien dialect?_ What the heck does it say?”

“48.”

“ _48?_ What the heck is that supposed to mean?!” She struggled to hold back her growing irritation.

“That’s what we were hoping to find out, but it seems you don’t know a thing.” Ratchet concluded, finding that piece he had been looking for on his table during the discussion. He chanted out a little “Aha!” when he picked out the reflective piece of metal that worked almost like a mirror from the other pieces of junk. He handed it to Smokescreen, who pointed it towards Bonnie for her to do a 180 and hike up the back of her shirt.

 

    She couldn’t help but gasp in surprise when she saw that her skin was stricken with strong red lines, with a painful design that looked entirely alien. One hand held her shirt up, and she imagined the ghost of her other one trailing a finger up her spine, slipping over the bumps and rigid contours, earning a tender nip to run through her nerves. It was the most hideous thing she had witnessed on a human body, and she fought the urge to keel over and vomit.

    Her hand dropped the fabric of her top, flying up to her face to conceal her mixed emotions of anger, embarrassment, disgust and sadness. _I guess this means I was nothing but livestock to them. Livestock they decided to brand and use for their own purposes_ , she bitterly thought. She didn’t think it was possible, but she hated them even more.

 

 


End file.
